Cattleya loddigesii var. alba

A new cattleya plant I brought from Montreal orchid show. An alba variaton of Cattleya loddigesii ordered from Orchis Floriculturing in Taiwan.



It is a blooming sized plant judjing by traces of spent flower stalks in all the mature pseudobulbs. There is a little green nub of new bulb start, hopefully it will be blooming for me when ready.

I have to get a few of smallish cattleya plants to keep in high light areas of my orchid tanks to provide some shade for paphs and phals. The previous residents - tenebrosa, purpurata and aurantiaca cross grew too tall and had to move out.

Since there are thousands of crosses exist in Cattleya alliance I decided to limit myself to getting species only, so there will be some kind of theme in my cattleya collection...

Laelia tenebrosa II

Laelia tenebrosa is the last one from the cattleya batch that I got from Clouds. I know, it can grow pretty large and I already have small tiny seedlings of this species, but it was pretty hard to pass an opportunity to get larger sized plant(it was listed as large seedling) that might flower sooner so I would be able to enjoy blooms in this life.
Since I usually try to buy mostly smallish species, I think I will be able to squeeze this large laelia in between vandas on my sunny window.



There are four pseudobulbs, bunch of nice roots, leaves are freshly green. I moved plant from plastic pot with bark mix to my preferred clay pot with chc.

Cattleya kerrii

Cattleya kerrii is another one from Clouds orchids.
Supposedly the large seedling it has a sheath already. Apparently sometimes very young plants can produce sheath, but often they don't result in blooms. My case is probably an example of it.



It is a small sized cattleya too (I have to remember my space limitations), also from Brazil. Interesting that its population in the wild is very limited and according to this post C.kerrii is considered an endangered species.
Name kerrii was given in honour of english botanist Kerr who lived in the beginning of 20st century.

I like the look of the blooms, it is quite different from usual cattleya flowers.

Laelia alaorii

Laelia alaorii was a travelling companion for my Cattleya schilleriana. It is a small species but it is also a small seedling of the small species which makes it practically microscopic.
It is mounted onto piece of wood:



The wood piece is very small too but of course it looks gigantic comparing to laelia.
Here is the closer look of the plant:



I would rather grow it potted but am afraid to break it when taking off the mount -it looks so fragile.
I really hope it survives and grows a bit so I wouldn't be so scared to handle it.

Cattleya schilleriana

For some reason I always order catts from Clouds in the fall. This year I just randomly looked through their catalogue and found catt. schilleriana listed there. I wanted it for a while and decided to get one even though it is just a seedling.
Naturally it had to have a travelling companion(actually three), so I got four cattleyas.
Here is the one that is responsible for the whole order - Cattleya schilleriana:



I like ordering from Clouds, their plants are always extremely healthy and something listed as medium seedling usually looks substantial enough to pass for a large one.

Cattleya schilleriana is a small sized fragrant catt. that originated from Brasil. You can see the bloom picture here.
On the website about orchid species its synonym listed as C. aclandiae var. schilleriana. So, I guess my schilleriana is a close relative of aclandiae - another small fragrant cattleya I would like to get, especially the coerulea var.
Leaves are a bit dark comparing to my other cattleyas and, I checked, they are supposed to have red tinge on the underside.

My plant came potted into plastic pot with moss - road to death for any cattleya under my care, so I repotted it into clay pot with chc right away.

Hopefully it will adjust to the new conditions without problems.

Cattleya araguaiensis II

Yet one more attempt to have Cattleya araguaiensis. The small seedling I have already will take ages to recover and some more ages to grow to blooming size. This one is already adult plant.



There is even a new pseudobulb starting, hopefully it will bloom when mature.

Every Catt. araguaiensis I tried to buy(and this one is the third one) had some black and brown patches on the leaves. I mean, there should be a way to grow cattleya with nice foliage so it doesn't look like cr*p when out of bloom.

Cattleya araguaiensis

I got Cattleya araguaiensis from Ecuagenera preorder last March. Plant looked very sad - two wrinkled leaves with black spots and no healthy roots at all. I paid $25 for it and was really disappointed, but still took it, since it was the top of my "most wanted" list.
I potted plant into chc and watered once a week. After a while I noticed a new growth which is growing into a pseudobulb. Now I think it can be logged in here, since there is a chance plant will make it:



Old leaves still have the black and brown patches, I monitor them to make sure they don't get near the new growth, but they seem to stay the same.
Cattleya araguaiensis is still on my wish list, but that would be a blooming sized plant I want to get.

Laelia sincorana var. coerulea

This little cutie came a while ago mounted on a square piece of wood and it is bloom size plant.
Laelia sincorana is a dwarf species with huge (comparing to the plant size) flower. I looked up the coerulea blooms - they are gorgeous!



I have potted it into chc to encourage some root growths. I might mount it after, when there is more roots on the plant.

Laelia purpurata

Small seedling, not in best conditions because of the rotted roots. Pseudobulbs look healthy, so I do hope that new roots will grow, they usually do, but not always.

B. Little Stars spike

The flower spike on Brassavola Little Stars grew up some more and now it doesn't look like a bud but more like a bean pod. I wonder how long before it will actually look like something that is going to bloom.